


Barbed Wire

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Demonstuck [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: (we all know why it happens to dirk), Blood, Demonstuck, Hospitals, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Torture Scene, i researched cut throats for this and had to cut the more graphic bits as a result, why does this happen to dirk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-12 22:39:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15350304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: Dirk's been captured by a couple demons, and has to move to the absolute last-resort plan.(Prompted by whoever asked about how Dirk got the scars around his neck in Demon Eyes.)





	1. Chapter 1

_I'm really going to die._

The realization doesn't come when the demons grab you. 

It doesn't come when the one with the short, spiky hair wraps barbed wire around your throat and wrists, strings you up in a doorway between two unused rooms in this abandoned house for her brother (or partner or lover or whatever the _fuck_ they are to each other, you don't know and you don't care) to play with.

It doesn't even come when his frustration at your refusal to answer his questions drives him to dig his claws into your shoulder, finding a nerve there and slowly digging into it as you scream until your voice breaks and your mind shoves you down into unconsciousness to escape from the pure white-red pain. 

No, the realization that you're going to die comes when you wake up again. 

Your shoulder aches, an almost bone-deep pain that reminds you that there's nothing stopping the asshole grinning at you from hurting you like that again. At that thought you can't help but struggle against the wire holding you, yanking your arms back and forth as much as you can with the negligible leverage you've got, accomplishing absolutely nothing other than little trickles of wetness working their way down your arms, making you remember just how much they hurt from having them raised above your head like this. 

The demon snickers. You know if you raise your head to look at him he'll grab your chin, dig his claws in, give you the fucking choice between telling him how to bring the wards around the safehouse down or—

_Or more pain. Until I break. Until I tell him anyway._

Thinking about that, you gasp and quit struggling, going limp. The worst part is that you can give him what he wants. The worst part is that, after two or three more rounds of those sharp and determined claws digging into your flesh, you _will_ give him what he wants. You won't be able to help it. 

You're tough, but you're human. You're not Hal, who can just turn his perception of pain off if shit gets bad enough. You've been raised to resist torture, but there's only so much that that training can do. 

Eventually, you'll break. 

And people will die because of it. 

You don't dare look up. You can't do it. 

_I'm really going to die,_ you think, and it's less of a realization and more of a decision, and it's fucking horrible and terrifying and the last thing you want to do—it means you're about to leave D, Jake, John, never see Hal again, never find out if your little bro's still alive—but. 

They'll still be here. You'll be the only one who's gone. 

It's a fair fucking trade. 

"Wakey wakey rise'n shine," the female demon purrs from way too close to you, and you finally raise your head. It's harder than you expected to do it; everything's stiff, and your body is screaming at you to not move in a way that puts stress on the hole in your shoulder. 

You can ignore your body right now, though. 

She's maybe five inches away from you, eyes wide and amused and way too fucking human, grinning with teeth that definitely _aren't_ human framed by painted-black lips—god, you got snagged by the fucking _goths,_ this would be funny if you weren't about to die—one hand reaching up to slide a finger down your arm and gather the blood from your wrists. She licks the red off, giggles at you, and when she reaches up for more she's only four inches from you and the tether on the barbed wire she's collared you with has at least five inches of play in it. 

Well. 

It doesn't. 

You lunge forward, beyond the point where the wire goes taut and digs in, past where your reflexes scream at you to _stop_. She's fast; by the time you sink your teeth into her jaw, she's already pulled back two or three inches, expression going from cruel delight to surprise to annoyance to _pain_ as she shrieks and jerks further away, pulling you along. 

Pulling the barbed wire deeper into your throat. 

You want to let go. Gasp for air. Start panicking at the blood on your neck—and there is blood, not enough to suggest that you did what needs to be done but enough that you're aware of it, hot wetness dripping down your collarbone. 

Not enough. It's not enough. 

And then the male demon yowls and grabs your shoulders, yanks you back from her and _throws_ you against the wall—except you never hit the wall, of course; you're still hooked to the doorframe by your wrists and tethered by your barb-wire collar. The impetus he provides does exactly what you needs it to do. 

The barbs caught in your throat jerk to the side. Rip your throat open. It's less of a spray than you hoped it would be, but you really fucking doubt the demons can fix this shit before you bleed out. 

You can still breathe, of course. Short of an actual edged weapon, it's really fucking hard to puncture the trachea. So you can breathe. You can hear the harsh involuntary animal noises you make as the female demon screams and slams her fists against your chest, your injured shoulder, pummeling you for outsmarting her like this. Outsmarting both of them. 

Then she punches you in the face. Something cracks with a sound like a fucking gunshot, and you're almost relieved when the world goes dark.

* * *

Something's beeping, soft and repetitive and just a hair too quick to be a clock. This isn't the afterlife. 

But hey, at least nothing hurts. 

You lie there in the dark and take stock of how you feel. 

Weird. The answer is, you feel weird. There's something around your neck, a soft and not-quite-constricting pressure. Not barbed wire, that's for sure. The same pressure on your right wrist, keeping you from moving it more than an inch or so. Even that inch of give provokes a mildly uncomfortable feeling, like there's something wrong with that hand. Reminds you of his claws in you, without the accompanying pain. 

There's no pain anywhere. Maybe this _is_ the afterlife. 

There's softness under your head, or at least something less than the unyielding quality of wood or concrete. Call it a bed. Breathing too deep is difficult; there's something around you're chest. 

Bandages? 

_Cracked ribs,_ you decide. _Broken, maybe._

That, along with your guesses at your other injuries and the lack of pain, suggest two things. Number one, you're still alive—whatever afterlife you end up getting sent to, you seriously doubt that they'll scoop you up injuries and all—and number two, you're on some heavy-duty painkillers. 

So...hospital. You're in a hospital. 

You breathe in, deep and careful, and open your eyes as you let the breath out. 

Your head's turned slightly to the left, so the first thing you see is familiar enough to make you lose the last of that breath in a sob that's not quite John's name. He's staring off into nothing, blue eyes unfocused and half-asleep behind his smudged glasses—how long have you been out of it?—but as soon as you make that quiet sound he's focused on you, eyes widening and filling with tears as he reaches over to smooth your hair down. 

(That fact that he doesn't just drag you up into his arms makes you think you're pretty fucking damaged right now.) 

It takes a lot of your concentration to raise your left hand and reach for John, but as soon as you do he grabs it, laces his fingers through yours and squeezes like he's holding onto you for dear life. If your other hand wasn't tethered to the bed—presumably to keep you from pulling out the IV anchored in your vein—you'd reach for him with that one too. 

As it is, you just roll your head against his free hand like a cat begging for attention. 

"Hey," you say. Then you wince, as the attempt to speak stirs up a sensation like broken glass being ground against the inside of your throat. _Fuck, I've...really messed myself up._

"Dirk, don't try to talk." John barely seems to register that his warning is just a little too late; he raises the hand that's gripping yours, rubbing his face against his arm to try to get rid of some of the tears on his face. It leaves his glasses more than a little crooked; makes you almost sob again with the realization that you are _with him,_ you're _not dead._ "You almost _died,_ you dumbass, Roxy burnt off three tattoos trying to get you stabilized and the doctors told D you fucked up your—I don't remember what they called it but you need to not talk or—" 

Wait, you actually know what body part John's talking about. You tug at his hand until he loosens his grip, use your thumb to trace letters into his palm. _L-A-R-Y-N-X._

"...larynx. Yeah. You messed that up." 

_J-A-K-E-?_ He's not here. You need to know where he is. If he's okay. They obviously rescued you, that sound you heard when the demon hit you _was_ a gunshot and not just in your head, so where—

"Jake's with D," John tells you, and you sigh with relief even though that actually kind of hurts. "They're tracking down a demon—" 

You trace _? ? ?_ into his hand, over and over again, a little harder than you need to. Just because D's one of the best hunters doesn't mean he's the only one available, and it may be selfish but you want both him and Jake here with you right now. 

John frowns in confusion, then shakes his head. "Not like that. A demon who's got healing powers or something...I don't know. Jake wouldn't tell me; he just said for me to stay here and Roxy and Hal to handle cleanup and D to come with him—" 

_W-H-Y._ You pause for a second, let him see that word's done. _I-S. J-A-K-E. I-N. C-H-A-_

"Why is Jake in charge?" 

Nodding seems like a questionable idea right now, so you just trace a question mark against John's palm again. 

"He's—I mean, I dunno if it's him in charge, Dirk." John sighs as you trace _?_ again, closing his hand around yours for a moment and squeezing gently. "We were trying to figure out exactly where you were—like, we were in the subdivision, Jake and Roxy narrowed it down that close with the pendulum but there's so much water around it, they c-couldn't get a fix—"

He's weeping again, you see, and your chest aches with the knowledge that you're the root cause of that. 

"—Roxy was saying if you di—if you didn't start showing up to divination in ten minutes she was going to—to channel everything she had saved up and cleanse the whole neighborhood—" 

She was willing to weaken herself, and kill everything within the bounds of her power, just to avenge you. God fucking damn. 

"—and Jake, I don't know what the fuck he did but he dropped the pendulum and just _stood_ there for a minute, I thought he was going to pass out, okay? And then he p-pulled the trunk open, knocked all the maps off like they weren't there, and picked up one of the guns—not even one of _his,_ Roxy's rifle—and he." John takes a breath, shaky but deep. "He closed his eyes, closed both his eyes and sighted it, took three shots through the window of one of the houses we weren't even _l-looking_ at, Dirk—then he dropped the gun and took off running." 

_T-O. M-E._

"Yeah. You. You were on the floor covered in blood, two demons headshot in there with you." Another shuddery breath. "I thought you were..." 

John doesn't want to say it. You spell it out against his palm instead. _D-E-A-D._

"Y-yeah." His chest hitches, and fuck but you wish you weren't so fucked up. You want to get your arms around him, hold him close and kiss those goddamn tears away... "D—he thought, he thought you were—you were gone. I saw his face, if he'd had a gun I would've t-tried to take it away from him—" 

_O-K-?_

"D's okay. When we got you—you know, not-dying, not bleeding out—he was okay." 

_J-A-K-E-?_

John's shudder is obviously subconscious. "He's not hurt. I don't know what he's doing." 

_D-I-V-I-N-A-_

"Divination? He's never tranced out for this long. He doesn't—it's not a _now_ thing, right? I thought he only saw the future, Dirk..." He shivers again, biting at his lip. "I don't—I don't know..." 

You want to worry. 

You're too tired to worry. You wonder if someone noticed that you were awake and just triggered the needle in your hand to give you another dose of whatever drugs you're on. 

_J-A-K-E. I-S. O-K,_ you spell out. Fuck, it's hard to keep your eyes open. _D. H-A-S. H-I..._

You can't remember how to spell that word. "Him." 

Trying to think about it, you close your eyes. As soon as you do that you're gone.

* * *

The next time you open your eyes it's to gentle hands cradling your head and the taste of blood in your mouth, and the first thing you see is two pure-red eyes set in a face shades darker than any of the ones you expected. 

If the man wasn't smiling reassuringly, you'd be worried. As it is, you assume that you don't have to struggle, and devote all your energy to trying not to retch at the weird tickle in your throat and the ugly taste of copper as he carefully lets go of you and turns away. 

"That should be it," he says, and you don't have time to wonder what he's talking about before Jake's leaning over you instead. You can see what John meant; there's something behind his eyes that isn't your boyfriend, the green just slightly off for a moment before he blinks and that _wrong_ color is gone and it's _him_ again. 

He scoops you up into his arms, sitting down so he can drag you onto his lap and cradle you against his chest, and you can't help but tense up at the expected pain. 

It doesn't come. 

Well, now you know what the demon meant by _that should be it._ He's healed you. 

Jake is sobbing. John's pressed up against him and you on the left, making little noises like he's trying not to cry; there's arms around you and Jake and John that you're willing to bet belong to D, even if he's not making any sound you can hear. 

You can feel Jake's heartbeat. You can infer the existence of your own heartbeat. 

You are _alive,_ and although this reaction is stupid, you still choose to bury your face in Jake's shirt and let yourself cry. Call it relief, call it release of tension, call it whatever the fuck you want. 

You're alive, and where you belong (in their arms), and these are good tears.


	2. Chapter 2

It's not until much later (well, maybe not _much_ later, but it seems like a long time before you're out of the goddamn hospital and back home) that you try to talk to Jake about what happened on his end of things. Even then, you don't put it like that. 

"Jake?" 

"Mrrm." It's a soft, not-quite-questioning sound, and he shifts slightly against you as he makes it, tightening his arm around your shoulders. 

(On your other side, John doesn't even twitch. You think he was asleep almost as soon as he settled into bed beside you; he just cuddled up and closed his eyes and was gone.)

"Are you okay?" 

Jake shivers, pulling you up enough to press his face against your hair and taking a deep breath like that. You want to sigh; you're pretty sure you need a shower, and the feeling of him so close is really reminding you of that fact. 

He doesn't seem to care. 

"Jake," you say again, after maybe a minute. "Jake. Jake?" 

Another shudder. But he does answer you, albeit almost too quietly for you to understand him. "I saw you _die_ , Dirk." 

"But I didn't die. You fixed shit, I'm right here, it's okay—" 

Jake gasps, holds in the air for heartbeats too long, and you realize that he's struggling to keep himself quiet enough to let John sleep. _Shit._ He's really not okay, and your stupid ass didn't realize. 

You gently pull away from John's grip, nudge Jake a few inches over in the bed so you can wrap your arms around him, pull him around so you can press your forehead against his, tangle yourself up with him as close as you can. "Talk to me," you tell him, as softly as you can. 

For a moment you think that he won't. 

Then he breathes out and closes his eyes. "I had a vision." 

"John told me." 

"No he bloody well _didn't_ —he doesn't know, Dirk, not about the vision, I—" Jake whimpers quietly, and you instinctively roll over, pulling him to lie on your chest. (Oof. Both your boyfriends are heavy enough to make this position just a little uncomfortable; that's the only downside to the fact that they can probably throw you through a wall.) 

It seems to help. He calms, at least a little. 

"Talk to me," you say again. "Please." 

And he does. 

"I've told you...about the visions, haven't I?" 

You nod, sure that he can feel the movement of your chin against the top of his head. His waking visions are few and far between; whatever gives him the gift of true prophecy is much more likely to visit him in dreams, or pass shrouded messages through the cards or whichever other medium he chooses to employ. But they _will_ come when he's awake and unprepared, though—you've seen him go still and rapt, blindly grope for paper and pen without moving his gaze from whatever you don't see, speak to give you messages that you'll repeat back to him for analysis when he comes out of it. 

"Roxy said you were dead." Another small shiver, this one gone before you can kiss his forehead. "D went _white_ , John—I don't want to think about John's face. And I didn't know where to look. Not at Roxy, not at either of them...

"I looked at Hal and I saw—I saw _you_. Standing there, with your eyes torn out and your throat—your throat half-gone, like ground _meat_. And Dirk, when the vision's close I can—I can _feel_ it, have I ever told you that? If there's plenty of time I know that, but if I can't change what I see, if it ca—can't be changed—" 

This time, you hold Jake close, kiss the top of his head over and over and murmur to him that it's all right as he struggles not to sob. It takes him a while before he can keep talking. 

"...if it can't be changed, I can feel it." He has to swallow hard, hands twisting up in your shirt as he presses his face against your neck. (Against the new ring of scars there.) "That's how it felt. Like I'd never be able to change it. You weren't _going_ to die, you _were_ dead, do you understand? Do you _understand_ that, Dirk? I didn't see that you would die, I _saw you dead._ Do you understand?" 

That's not a rhetorical question. 

Not one you can really lie in answer to, either. "I don't think I can ever understand that. How it'd feel." 

The noise Jake makes is either soft laughter or a choked sniffle. "Yes you do. You tried to fucking kill yourself so you wouldn't have to see _us_ dead, didn't you?" 

"It was that obvious?" You're pretty sure that John assumed the injuries to your throat were something the demons did, and D hasn't corrected him about that yet. 

"No. Well, maybe. To me." One of Jake's hands frees itself from the fabric of your shirt, fingertips tracing feather-light along the paper marks as he turns his head to look at them. "The...the thing riding me when I first saw them sees more clearly than I do, after all." 

"The thing riding you." 

"I don't know what it is." His head tilts to meet your eyes for a moment, his own green eyes troubled and haunted and too fucking young for any of this. Still innocent, despite everything. 

( _We're all so fucking young_ , you think, and then push the thought out of your head.) 

"I saw you dead," Jake says, for at least the third or fourth time. "The beast—beast? No. It's not a beast. My power, or the thing that gives it to me...whatever I _channel_ , it showed you to me, and it asked _will you save him?_ "

He hesitates, chews on his lip.

"...no. Not that, exactly...the bloody thing didn't use words. It makes it hard to explain...but it asked me _something,_ anyway. If I'd let you be saved. If it should save you. If I'd let myself be used. All those questions, and it was one question, and the thing knew what my answer would be, because it was taking me even while it was asking it." 

Jake stops talking altogether, curling up against you and _clinging_ , his fingers digging into your skin rather than just your shirt this time. It hurts enough that you gently pull at his wrists until he lets go and latches on to your hands instead. 

"So it took you?" you ask him, very quietly, and he nods with a short violent motion that makes you think of something unspeakably painful. 

"Because I—I told it to. Would have told it to. Was—was telling it to—Dirk, it's so _hard_ to explain, I'm sorry—" 

His voice breaks, and this time when he presses his face against your neck you feel wetness. 

"Jake..." 

"No. I'm—I'm all right." He draws in a shaky breath that is the antithesis of _all right._ "P-peachy." 

"You liar." You punctuate that with a kiss pressed to his forehead. "You don't have to tell me. We can stop. Go to sleep." 

"In a minute. It _hurts._ " His eyes meet yours again, and just as quickly flick away. "Knowing. Being the only god damned one who knows it wasn't me." 

"John knows." 

"He doesn't. He saw me fire and he saw me try to keep you alive and he thinks it was me, on some level, but the thing that shot those bastards and put a bullet three-quarters of an inch above your head to snap that rope, that wasn't me. I couldn't come that close to shooting you, Dirk, never...I made a choice. Gave _something_ permission to do what I wanted it to do, and it did it because it knew if you died, I probably would too—" 

"Jake—" 

"—and even if I didn't, I'd never pass on a prophecy again, if it didn't help me keep you I didn't want its sheep-fucking help and that things sees all the futures so it saw and knew that and it didn't dare lose its mouthpiece—" 

"Jake, breathe." 

He does. 

Then he whispers, "Dirk." 

"Yeah." 

"I don't know what it is. The thing I invited. What if—what if I'm wrong, Dirk? What if it's not what I channel when I read the cards or cast runes, what if it's...something else? Worse? What if I've opened myself up to hurt someone? Hurt _you_?" 

Your mind connects this to what you could have done, almost immediately. The parallels between you giving up the passwords for the wards and Jake giving up the sanctity of his self hit you hard, but it's the irony of him trading one for the other that makes your heart skip a couple beats. 

"That's not what happened," you say, when you can speak again. 

"Dirk, I love you but there's absolutely no way you can be sure of that." 

"It helped us. Fuck, unless you or D knew that demon you brought in to heal me—" 

"No." 

"Then it gave us, gave _hunters_ , a really fucking powerful resource. Healers like that aren't common, and if we've got him on our side because of whatever you did... that's a positive for us." 

"But—" 

"Did you feel anything from the wards?" 

"...no." 

"D didn't say anything about them being tripped, either. And he would have. You know he would have." 

"Yes." More conviction, this time. 

"You're all right, Jake. You're all _you._ " And you pull him up, kiss him not on the forehead but in the lips, long and careful and even sweeter for the care both of you put into it. "Can you sleep?" 

His eyes are less troubled now, not at all haunted, and he smiles at you just a little. "I do believe so—but you'd better sleep too, love." 

"I will. Promise." 

He shifts his weight off you, finally; you scoot back next to John, grinning at his sleepy murmur as he wraps his arms around your from one side and Jake wraps _his_ arms around you from the other. It's only when you're settled between the two of them, as surrounded by love as you can get, that you close your eyes. 

Later, you can plan out calling Rose and bringing her down to put Jake's mind at ease about whatever he might have called into himself. Now, you simply fulfill the promise you just made to your beloved, and sleep.


End file.
